Autumn Leaves and Childhood Memories ...

Well, it's been a cold, rainy week up here on the hill. I have been having flashbacks - so you've been warned. Stop reading now unless ... NERD ALERT.

Wandering around the house the other day, I pulled a book out of an old bookcase at random, and discovered an old treasure from my childhood. And with this, started the walk down Memory Lane.

I spent several afternoons just leafing through my old friend again. The back story is, my parents were wily folk, and had a house full of bright, inquisitive childen they DESPERATELY needed to keep entertained. My mother is rabid about frequenting resale shops, and one day came home with a set of the 'Young People's Encyclopedia', published by the Grolier Society. I took these with me when I left home, and forgot I had them, until this week.

These books were not your usual encyclopedic fare - they actually had many broad-ranging, short little articles which gave an overview of a given subject, and touched on the state of the art at the time the book was published. Our set had been published in 1949 - a bit out of date, but ... I had forgotten how much I loved them - little stories on science, aviation, disease control, civics lessons, lesser-known tidbits of American History from non-standard view points, or detailing the sacrifices made to eradicate diseases I had never heard of, because they had been banished from the world long before I was born. Best of all, the society would sometimes launch into some editorial asides (properly notated, of course), that were just priceless.

So, I got my one of my old friends out, dusted it off, then I got curious - the Grolier Society (GS). GROLIER SOCIETY?? I'd heard of Grolier Incorporated (GI) ... did a little research, and was even more pleasantly surprised to find out GI was a 3RD generation iteration of the GS. The group's major effort was put towards creating non-fiction, encyclopedias, books of knowledge, etc., targeted for children. And some of my family's other non-fiction faves came from their catalogue, and have been passed on to the next generation, who enjoyed them as much as wee did

But our parents spared no expense; and for their efforts got five little egg-heads with excellent musical skills (thanks to years of lessons), plus one pure, nothing-else-exists musician trying to make a career for himself ... at least until he passed on unexpectedly 15 years ago ...

Which takes me next to the remembering the rainy days we spent composing our own music, or adding sound effects to someone else's compositions, a la Spike Jones. My mom found some old reel-to-reel tapes we had made as children, keeping ourselves entertained on rainy-gray days like we've had this week. I had to HUNT to find a machine, but in my family, being a major pack-rat is a way of life ...

OH.MY.GOD. I have been rolling on the floor all day. We were absolutely sick little puppies, and the parents must have been insane or deaf, to have even let us do these things.

And we were contagious apparently. On one of the tapes, we had actually gotten the other six kids in our neighborhood to help us out on one of our arrangements. We wrote words and composed sound effects to accompany "In a Persian Market", played on the Wurlitzer organ. I'll spare you the details for now ...

I'm transferring the sucker to my computer as soon as I figure out how, and maybe I'll attach it to this article ... and send it to my siblings' children ...